Reviews for Photography

The average rating for Photography based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-21 00:00:00 Steven Kraemer Not sure where to start with this one. Most of the books I've read about the sociology of photography focus on very specific kinds of photography - that is, what might be called professional or artistic photography. This kind of photography comes in many styles and serves many purposes - but you could group them as commercial photography (ads mostly), artistic photography (though, admittedly, as someone said, advertisements are the art of capitalism - and since photography and capitalism grew up together this is true on many levels) and photography as surveillance (police photography, journalistic photography and so on). Now, while there is nearly an endless number of remarkably interesting things that can be said about all of these kinds of photography, one of the areas that is often missed is the most popular kind of photography of all - amateur photography. This book is mostly about just that - the kind of photography that you and I might take. To understand this book it probably helps to have a thumbnail of Bourdieu's main interests. The first thing to know is that Bourdieu is interested in how different classes of people distinguish themselves from other classes of people. Mostly they do this by having interests that are hard for other groups to imitate. So, if you are upper class you can afford the time to become very interested in, say, classical music. You can know everything there is to know about the transition from classical to romantic music say, or the various forms of church chanting that early serious music developed out of. Having money you will be able to afford to not only buy records, but to attend concerts. This makes a huge difference. There is no record that is quite the same as a good concert performance. Why? Because concert halls have lots of air in them, more air, I'm assuming, that your house could reasonably have. So, even if you have a really good sound system, a concert hall is going to be able to out-do it. Having access to this kind of environment means developing interests on what is the most fruitful and fertile possible ground. It also means getting to hear a wider variety of music than you might otherwise. Upper class people are much more likely, for example, to like what might be called 'hard to like' music. Like Mahler, say. They are more likely to like difficult music. This distinguishes them from other people who are probably more likely to like what might be called the light classics. It is because serious music - that is, music that requires effort and concentration and lots of related knowledge - is hard that liking it also displays 'distinction'. And the upper classes are much more likely to have had all of the opportunities necessary to gain an appreciation of this kind of music than other classes will have had. Now, I want you to notice what I have NOT said. First, I haven't said that rich people are lazy and dull. Many of the things that they find worthwhile - serious music, serious art and so on - require real effort. Sometimes years and years of effort. Secondly, I haven't said that serious music is exclusively available to the upper classes - or that being upper class means you will automatically like Mahler. No, but you are infinitely more likely to have heard of Mahler and perhaps even know some of his music if you are from the upper class than those from other classes are. Thirdly, I'm definitely not saying that there is nothing to this music to make it interesting to anyone other than upper class twits. I'm also not saying that because something is hard and can be used as a test of social class distinctions means that that is all one can say about it. I'm not saying, that is, that because Mahler can be used as a way of dividing the sheep from the goats, that the only thing worthwhile about Mahler is how he divides livestock. What Bourdieu also notices here is that serious music and so on also divides because those who are not meant to listen to Mahler have been taught by experience over a lifetime that his music 'isn't for the likes of us'. Some activities are 'classed' and so to belong to your own class requires you to be not interested in certain things. What is interesting here is that the things that generally get used as a basis of social distinction are very often things with very long histories. Interesting factoid - in Australia buckets of money is spent to encourage people to learn Asian Languages (Asia is our future) but there are still more people in Australia who are studying Latin than there are people who are studying Chinese. Why? Latin is seen as a language of 'distinction' - and only certain classes of people (generally those in Australia who go to private schools) have access to learning Latin. Which brings us to photography - photography does not have a long history, so it is going to struggle to be seen as something that offers people social 'distinction'. And so it proves. This book comes from research Bourdieu did in France on who actually takes photographs and what do they take photographs of. What he found was that it was much more likely that you would take photographs if you were a clerk than if you were a senior executive. In fact, if you were from the upper class you were likely to see photography as a bit vulgar. Oddly enough, you would also tend to be more likely to see the artistic merits of photography too - lower classes tending to see mostly the technical aspects of photography - but distinction would be much more likely to come to you as someone from the upper class via drawing or painting than from photography. This helps to explain the subtitle of this book - a middle-brow art. The thing is that photography is seen by almost everyone as being kind of easy. The world is out there - you stick a camera in front of the world and press down on a little button and, well, no matter who does the pressing you get pretty much the same photograph. Not much room for distinction. Bourdieu also found that the most frequent kinds of photographs that were taken were family shots. And mostly these were taken as a means of group formation. Let's look at this a bit closer. In Australia the two big ceremonies are probably when a person turns 21 and their wedding. Now, guess which of these two that you are most likely to hire a professional photographer to record. Why is it so obvious that the wedding is going to be the one? The point is that a wedding is really about two groups, two families, coming together to make one group - as symbolised by the couple. And this group formation needs to be documented. This symbolic joining of the groups is made most clear with the birth of the first child (ever wondered why there are so many photos of the first child in the family and so few of any of the next ones?) We don't tend to think of our societies as having rituals that are related to group formation, but clearly we do. People with kids tend to be much more likely to have cameras than people without children, but there are very strict 'normal' things you can take photographs of. One of the normal things you take photographs of is your kids. This is because it is important for group formation that this is reinforced and you do that by sending grandparents and god parents and so on photos of little Johnny. Another thing that is important to take photographs of is your holidays. Bourdieu says somewhere that a holiday needs to be photographed for it to be real. In fact, at one point he is talking about the difference between a bad photograph where a street sign seems to be coming out of a woman's head and another photograph where a piece of the Eiffel Tower looks like it is coming out of a woman's head and how the second photograph with the Eiffel Tower doesn't look 'wrong' in the way the other one does. He says this is mostly because the point of holiday snaps is to make you 'at one' with your holiday destination - so, this photograph with the women with the Eiffel Tower coming out of her head just makes literal what would have been implied anyway. What is really interesting here is that what must be photographed ends up being a very limited number of things and most of these things are defined by group formation. But what about people who want to be photographers and therefore to take 'artistic shots'. Well, the interesting thing here is that these people tend to be people without families - more specifically, adolescent males. As Bourdieu points out, as soon as these people get into a relationship they generally stop mucking around with photography. But if they do continue they tend not to be the ones who take family photos. So, you get the odd situation where you have an amateur photographer in the family who refuses to take photos of the family or family functions (such photos are symbolic of hack photographers) and so the 'social glue photography' is taken by the females of the family. All a bit like the difference between tourists and travellers. The thing about photography, though, is that being a photographer looks - from the outside at least - like a pretty good life. Let's face it - there isn't all that much to learn. Light levels, shutter speeds, aperture sizes, film speeds - while it is true that the difference between a good and great photograph isn't really something that can be put down to fluke (right place at the right time or lucky shot), all the same if you learn a few rules you will probably be able to take reasonably competent photographs. But professional photography does look like a way into the middle class - it is a well paying profession if you can get a start. And what Bourdieu found was that the kinds of people who did get a start tended to be from the upper classes. They were the ones with the family support to 'buy their own studio' to start off their careers. They had the contacts to take photographs of people most likely able to pay. They have the taste already to make sure they don't make the kinds of faux pas that would ruin photographs and occasions. And they are more likely to already know the 'stars' that people want to see photographs of. The working class kid with a box brownie (or later equivalents) isn't really going to cut it. But for the middle classes - as Bourdieu mentions, the clerical workers and so on - being an amateur photographer might just let you have a life of independence. The chances may not be high, but they are high enough to tantalize. I'm going to end this review in an odd way for me - I'm going to put in a series of quotes and their page numbers. I haven't said this yet, but I really did enjoy this book. The problem with Bourdieu is that he starts hard. Some of the text at the beginning of this really requires you to know that he doesn't believe there is a difference between objective and subjective realities - this is a remarkably complex idea of his, much too complex to be 'assumed' of the reader right at the start of the book. So, I don't think starting a book by saying, "In other words, the description of objectified subjectivity refers to the description of the internalization of objectivity. The three moments of the scientific process are therefore inseparable: immediate lived experience, understood through expressions which mask objective meaning as much as they reveal it, refers to the analysis of objective meanings and the social conditions which makes those meanings possible, an analysis which requires the construction of the relationship between the agents and the objective meaning of their actions." Page 4 Isn't really the most likely way to win you lots of friends. Still, if you are going to read this skip ahead a little way until he starts talking about weddings. The writing becomes much more clear and the ideas incredibly interesting. One might say of photography what Hegel said of philosophy: 'No other art or science is subjected to this last degree of scorn, to the supposition that we are masters of it without ado.' Page 5 If one accepts, with Durkheim, that the function of the festivity is to revitalize and recreate the group, one will understand why the photograph is associated with it, since it supplies the means of solemnizing those climatic moments of social life in which the group solemnly reaffirms its unity. In the case of the wedding, the picture that captures for eternity the group that has been brought together, or rather the bringing together of two groups, is necessarily implied within a ritual whose function is to consecrate, that is, to sanction and to sanctify the union of two groups effected through the union of two individuals. Pages 20-21 "At the wedding you never ask the photographer to take pictures of the children." Page 21 Previously, photographs were taken chiefly of adults, secondarily of family groups bringing together parents and children, and only exceptionally of children on their own. Today the hierarchy is reversed. Page 22 How could people's dispositions and attitudes not be marked by solemnity? No-one would think of disobeying the photographer's instructions, of talking to their neighbours, or looking in the other direction. That would be a lapse in good manners and more especially an insult to the whole group, especially those 'who are being honoured that day', the couple's families. Page 23 Nothing may be photographed apart from that which must be photographed. Page 24 To take photographs of one's children is to become the historiographer of their childhoods and to prepare as an heirloom for them the image of what they used to be. Page 30 The family album expresses the essence of social memory. There is nothing more unlike the introspective 'search for lost time' than those displays of family photographs with their commentaries, the ritual of integration that the family makes its new members undergo. Page 30 The tourist of outsider can cause astonishment by photographing everyday objects or local people at their habitual occupations. 'You're taking a photograph of that gate!' Page 34 Photography is what one does on holiday, and also what makes a holiday Page 36 The truly complete honeymoon is revealed by the couple photographed in front of the Eiffel Tower… Page 36 The reason why any enthusiastic amateurs so categorically stress the sexual division of photographic tasks and interests, and jealously keep for themselves the more noble uses of the camera, leaving their wives with the traditional uses to which their 'femininity' has 'predestined' them. Page 40 …thus the rate of participation in camera clubs drops sharply after marriage. Page 41 The chosen and deliberate refusal of photography reaches a peak among the most senior executives and professionals, as well as among craftsmen and shopkeepers, while, on the other hand, the intention to take photographs is particularly strong among manual workers, junior executives and, especially, clerical workers. Page 42 Likewise, it is the implicit definition of the quality of the practice that determines the type of equipment which each class holds to be necessary: while among manual workers the modal practice does not require additional instruments, among senior executives it presupposes a whole range of equipment. Page 44 In fact, photographic practice is distinguished both from practices which are expensive but require no intellectual training (such as tourism) and practices which are economically accessible but only to those who have had the necessary training (such as going to museums). Page 47 …the members of the upper classes are shown to be both more predisposed than others to grant photography aesthetic value as such, and less inclined to accord it value as an activity. Page 67 "My husband doesn't take photographs. He knows how to behave", says the wife of a senior executive… Page 67 The very reasons that turn the privileged classes away from photography may in fact incline certain members of the middle classes to seek in it a substitute within their reach for the consecrated practices which remain inaccessible to them. Page 72 But, at a deeper level, only in the name of a naïve realism can one see as realistic a representation of the real which owes its objective appearance not to its agreement with the very reality of things (since this is only ever conveyed through socially conditioned forms of perception) but rather to conformity with rules which define its syntax within its social use, to the social definition of the objective vision of the world; in conferring upon photography a guarantee of realism, society is merely confirming itself in the tautological certainty that an image of the real which is true to its representation of objectivity is really objective. Page 77 … like painters, many amateur photographers force their models into composed and laborious poses and postures, it is because, here as elsewhere, the 'natural' is a cultural ideal which must be created before it can be captured. Page 81 Like respect for etiquette, frontality is a means of effecting one's own objectification: offering a regulated image of oneself is a way of imposing the rules of one's own perceptions. Page 83 Photographs are certainly taken just as much - if not more - in order to be shown as in order to be looked at. Page 88 Photography, far from being perceived as signifying itself and nothing else, is always examined as a sign of something that it is not. The legibility of the picture itself is a function of the legibility of its intention. Page 92 It is no accident that passionate photographers are always obliged to develop the aesthetic theory of their practice, to justify their existence as photographers by justifying the existence of photography as a true art. Page 98 While the profession recruits a large number of its members from subjects of middle class origin, for whom it represents a profession more or less equal to that of their class of origin, it is especially characterised by the high proportion of subjects of upper class origin. Page 158 Photography assures those who engage in it, if not of upclassing, then at least of the hope and promise of upclassing. Page 161 Because photography is more capable than the theatre of providing a living, it tends to attract boys, while the theatre attracts girls. Page 171

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-28 00:00:00 Stephen Oneil بوردیو در این کتاب از استدلال‌های جالب توجهی بهره می‌برد تا پرده از فلسفه‌ی حقیقی فعالیتی بردارد که امروزه یکی از رشته‌های هنری است: عکاسی. در راه نشان دادن تناقض‌های وجودی عکاسی، از نقل‌قول‌های جذابی از افراد مختلف از گروه‌های مختلف اجتماعی نیز استفاده کرده‌است تا منظور خود را بهتر برساند. هرچند هسته‌ی استدلال و حلقه‌های اولیه‌ی آن به قوت خود باقی اند، به نظرم در چندسال اخیر، شاخ و برگ‌های جدیدی حول این پدیده جوانه زده‌ که نیاز به مطالعه‌ی تحلیل‌های جدیدتر از پدیدارشناسی عکاسی به‌شدت حس می‌شود. مطالعه‌ی این اثر برایم بسیار پرزحمت و زمان‌بر شد. قطعاً عمق محتوا در این مساله بی‌تاثیر نبوده، اما عامل اصلی را ترجمه‌ی نامساعد آن می‌دانم. کیهان ولی‌نژاد تلاش گسترده‌ای برای ترجمه کرده. این را از آن‌جایی می‌توان دریافت که می‌بینیم اغلب با دقت بسیار، از بهترین کلمات معادل فارسی بهره برده‌است؛ اما متاسفانه در چینش جملات هیچ قریحه‌ای دیده نمی‌شود. انگار همان جمله‌ها تنها با کلمات فارسی هم‌معنا، به‌طوری مختصر بازنویسی شده‌اند. منظور من به هیچ وجه دخل و تصرف در متن نیست، بلکه برای گفتن یک جمله به فارسی، همان پیچ‌وتاب‌های زبان مرجع را نباید به نوشته منتقل کرد. هر زبانی با نظم خاص خودش قابل فهم است.